Mouse Settings

Mouse Settings is an accordion on the Settings tab of the Settings window (Edit > General Settings, Alt+F9). It decides what the mouse wheel, the right button and the two thumb buttons do — for every mode at once, or differently in Retopology, Paint, Sculpt and Voxel — and how the mouse behaves while you are in the middle of a drag.

While dragging

Three checkboxes at the top of the accordion keep a stroke from being interrupted by the mouse itself.

Control	What it does	Default
Ignore other mouse buttons while dragging	While a mouse button is held — painting, sculpting, sketching, a lasso, orbiting, dragging a slider or resizing a panel — clicks of the other buttons are ignored, so a stray right- or middle-click cannot start an orbit or a pan in the middle of a stroke.	On
Ignore the mouse wheel while dragging	While a mouse button is held, the wheel does nothing — no zoom, no brush-size change. Off, the wheel still zooms in the middle of a stroke.	Off
Invert zoom	Scrolling up zooms out instead of in, and a Zoom drag goes the other way. Zoom In and Zoom Out bindings are not flipped.	Off

Presets

If your hands already know another program, pick it in the Preset dropdown and click Apply Preset. That fills the All Modes tab with the program's mouse layout and puts every mode tab back on Same as All Modes. Applying a preset also sets Invert zoom back off, since none of the presets use it.

Preset	What it sets
Vertexix	The out-of-the-box layout: every input on Default, except Back button = Undo and Forward button = Redo.
Blender	Middle-button drag orbits, the wheel zooms in and out, and a wheel click does nothing.
Maya	Middle-button drag pans, right-button drag zooms (a right click does nothing), and the wheel zooms.
ZBrush	Right-button drag orbits (a right click does nothing), middle-button drag pans, and the wheel zooms.
Substance Painter	Middle-button drag pans, right-button drag zooms (a right click does nothing), and the wheel zooms.
3ds Max	Middle-button drag pans and the wheel zooms.

Every preset except Vertexix keeps the thumb-button Undo/Redo of the default layout.

All Modes and the mode tabs

Below the preset row are five tabs: All Modes, Retopology, Paint, Sculpt and Voxel. Each tab lists every bindable input with a dropdown of what that input does.

• All Modes is the base layout, used everywhere unless a mode says otherwise.
• Each mode tab starts every input on Same as All Modes, and the dropdown shows what that currently resolves to in brackets — for example Same as All Modes (Orbit). Change All Modes and every mode still on Same follows.
• Picking anything else on a mode tab overrides All Modes for that input in that mode only. So you can, say, give the right-button drag to Brush Size in Sculpt while it still orbits everywhere else.

To undo an override, set the input back to Same as All Modes.

Inputs you can bind

Input	Kind
Mouse wheel scroll up	Step
Mouse wheel scroll down	Step
Mouse wheel click	Click
Mouse wheel click and drag	Drag
Mouse wheel held, scroll up	Step
Mouse wheel held, scroll down	Step
Right mouse button	Click
Right mouse button drag	Drag
Back button	Click
Back button drag	Drag
Forward button	Click
Forward button drag	Drag

The kind decides which actions the dropdown offers: a drag can only take a drag action, while a click or a wheel step can take a one-shot action.

Actions

Action	Offered for	What it does
Same as All Modes	Every input, mode tabs only	Follow whatever the All Modes tab says.
Default	Every input	What the button already does in that tab.
None	Every input	The input does nothing.
Orbit, Pan, Zoom	Drags	Move the camera.
Rotate Light	Drags	Swings the light around the model, the same way the Alt+drag relight does.
Brush Size, Brush Strength	Drags	Change the brush's size or strength by dragging, in Paint and Sculpt.
Lasso Select, Lasso Deselect	Drags	Draw a lasso that adds to or removes from the selection.
Box Select, Box Deselect	Drags	Drag a box that adds to or removes from the selection.
Zoom In, Zoom Out	Clicks and wheel steps	Zoom one step. Not flipped by Invert zoom.
Centre View on Cursor	Clicks and wheel steps	The point under the cursor becomes the view's centre — and so the pivot every later orbit turns about.
Aim Along Surface	Clicks and wheel steps	Turns the camera to look along the normal of the polygon under the cursor, so you see that surface head-on.
Select / Deselect Polygon	Clicks	Toggle the polygon under the cursor in or out of the selection.
Undo, Redo	Clicks and wheel steps	Exactly what Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z do in the current tab.

For clicks and wheel steps, the dropdown continues below these with every action from the Keyboard Setting tab, under the same group headings — so a thumb button can run anything a keyboard shortcut can.